The One Before the One (20 page)

‘Yeah, I got some news, today. I got a job. In Sheffield. I’m trying to decide whether to take it.’

Something funny happens; my heart takes an unexpected little dive, so small and unexpected that I don’t even recognize it.

‘Sheffield, hey? Wow, that’s a long way. So what’s the job?’

‘Web design, back doing what I used to do. It’d mean an end to the novel writing and the boat and all this,’ he says, looking around him. ‘But I don’t know if I can turn it down. It’s regular money, a job, and these are scary times …’

My mind is blank. For a minute, I don’t know what to say.

‘Well, I guess you have to take it then.’

His eyebrows flicker. Did I say the wrong thing?

He smiles. ‘Yeah, I guess so,’ he says. ‘Can’t wait for ever for a break. Hanging around a boat, no fixed income, pretending to be some sort of tortured artiste!’

I laugh. I don’t want to stop the conversation here, but I’ve run out of words, of energy. So I say:

‘Nope, I guess you might be waiting for ever.’

‘Exactly,’ he says. ‘Well …’

‘Yeah …’

‘I’d better get going. There’s a vast quantities of wine to be got through, life affirming decisions to be made.’ He touches my arm. ‘See you then.’

‘Yeah, have a good one, um … let me know when you might be going.’

Then he kisses me on the cheek and he walks off towards Battersea Bridge, leaving me standing outside the Spar trying to remember what I was getting.

When I get home, to a still, dark house, Lexi in bed, I make myself a cup of tea and turn on my computer. In my inbox, there’s an email. It’s from Wayne.

I smile – he was amusing – and click on the attachment.

Love is a Battlefield: Kevin Hart’s Reports From the Frontline of Love.

I liked the title – even if it was a bit of a mouthful.
Love is a Battlefield,
eh? Clearly, Pat Benatar references. I approved wholeheartedly.

I open it and randomly start reading halfway down the page.

There had to be a way to get Lucy Briers back. What did Ryan Kaye have that I didn’t? Despite a dad who owned a carpet company (big wows – my dad laid carpets) and a face like Emilio Estevez (I couldn’t see it myself. I thought he had more of a look of Keith Chegwin). Then that night, when Mum and me were having tea – Findus Crispy Pancakes – my brother Daz brought home a book about Arnold Schwarzenegger and it all became clear. Muscles. That’s what Ryan Kaye didn’t have that I did – well not yet, but I would. The next day, we bought weights from Argos, some protein drinks from the pound shop and there commenced our intense regime. Three hours per day, every day of the school holidays, we’d workout in the back garden following the Arnold Schwarzenegger book for inspiration. Mum would hang the washing out, occasionally tutting at us in our underpants. But I didn’t care; Lucy Briers would soon be mine. She’d be eating off my rippling torso in no time.

It’s only when I look at the clock, that I realize it’s 1 a.m. and that I’ve been reading for an hour and a half and I think I’m already a little bit in love with Kevin Hart.

Antoine eyes me from behind reception, his ice-blue eyes darting up from his computer screen, like I’m a child that he needs to keep a check on.

I sit on the Dali-esque, high-backed red velvet sofa, clutching my overnight bag and smile back at him, weakly. I take my mobile out of my bag – just to look like I’m doing something really – and check my mobile again, but nothing: not a text, not a missed call. Just me sitting here, switching it off and on again in case there’s something wrong with it when the only thing that’s wrong with anything is my head. What the hell am I doing here?

‘Every-sing is okay, Madame Steele?’ Antoine enquires eventually, after I have given him my hundredth fake smile.

‘Yes, all okay,’ I say, but the risk of tears is becoming more real by the second. Just one more sympathetic smile from a camp, French concierge and I will dissolve, start wailing like a banshee.

Today, Wednesday, is the ‘book club’ (whatever the hell that means any more) and I have been sitting here, in the foyer of the Malmaison Hotel, waiting for Toby for twenty minutes. Idiot.

Part of me, the part labelled ‘do the right thing’, not to
mention ‘self-preservation’, decided last night, after the evening with Martin, that I wasn’t going to come today, that I just wasn’t going to show up. But here I am, here I bloody well am, stuck to the seat even though every logical molecule of me is saying: ‘Go. Go now! Remove your backside from the chair and walk out of the door!’

He’s not going to come, I know it. But I still can’t move. Love is a law unto itself – why did I never see that? It couldn’t really give a monkey’s about rules, logic or what is right. Christ, I’m no better than an addict robbing his own mother for his next fix.

‘You are waiting for Monsieur Steele?’ says Antoine, suddenly.

And he’s not even fucking here.
I have made myself feel like shit for absolutely nothing.

‘How did you guess?’ I reply with a weak smile.

I was going to end it anyway, that was never in question. I just wanted to do it in person, in the flesh. Okay, that’s bollocks, I wanted to
touch
his flesh just one more time.

But he’s not coming and, as the minutes tick by and Antoine’s sympathetic glances become more intense, I feel even more moronic sitting here with my overnight bag.

With each of the three relocated book clubs at the Malmasion, the contents have dwindled; as each new hope has been dashed, my efforts have waned. The first time we came, I brought three lingerie collections – pretty, slutty, sporty – like this was a Miss World Contest – four pairs of shoes (did I think I was going to get a chance to change during the night?) and all the oral hygiene products I could lay my hands on, including a preview bottle of Minty Me breath freshener, which Toby thought was a bit sad, like mixing work with pleasure, but which I pointed out wasn’t exactly the same as me bringing a jar of mango chutney if say Patak’s were my client.

I think of us at that first ‘on location’ book club here at the Malmaison and think how different the whole picture was then: us giggling, him holding my hand, so dry and warm, us collapsing into giggles in the lift at Antoine’s absurdly strong French accent.

Antoine must see the tears fill my eyes because he gets up and walks over to me with that absurd, camp walk of his. It’s like Antoine is one of those caricature drawings that Toby got done in Brighton, but a walking, talking, real-life version.

He sits down next to me and moves in conspiratorially.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Couldn’t be better,’ I say, thinking, ground, swallow up. It’s so obvious what’s happening here. This is so humiliating.

‘He is not coming?’ he asks, looking at me from under enormous, doll-like black lashes.

‘No,’ I say, looking at the ground. ‘It doesn’t look like it, anyway.’

Antoine nods slowly, then inhales dramatically through his long, equine nose.

‘
Écoute
,’ he says, touching my arm. ‘I ’ope you don’t sink I am prying. I certainly make no judgement about ze way people conduct zer private relationships within the walls of zis ’otel – God
knows
, I’ve tarted myself around Lond-on.’

A nervous giggle escapes, then, again, the threat of tears.

‘But I ’ave a lot of experience of men,’ he continues, keeping his voice down. ‘Probably more zan you …’

‘Oh definitely more than me.’

‘And one develope a sixth sense for these things, zat’s all I’m saying,’ he says, touching my arm. ‘And I am not sure that Monsieur Steele – ’e is not Monsieur Steele, is he?’

I shake my head. ‘No, he is not Monsieur Steele.’

‘I am not sure ’e is … what is it you English say? A good …?’

‘A
good
egg?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘One of those.’

Just then, there’s a beep as a text arrives and I nearly jump out of my seat. I look at Antoine who pats me on the knee and goes back to reception.

I press ‘read’.

Please let it be him. Let it be Toby saying he’s so sorry to have kept me waiting but he’s been stuck on the tube, there was a fatality on the line and he’ll be with me any minute.

It’s not. Instead, there are just seven words. I know because I read every one over and over again.

Sorry can’t make it. Something came up. x

It’s been four days since Brighton and today was my first day back in the office. I hadn’t noticed anything too different. I’d felt reassured after the ‘I love you’ that things were okay,
more
than okay. That things had moved on past me having to be paranoid. Even though he hadn’t answered the question I’d asked him about loving Rachel, I’d hoped I was safe. Clearly, nothing could have been further from the truth.

I look over at Antoine, my eyes swimming with tears, but he’s busy talking to a guest, so I just get up quietly, put the phone in my bag and walk outside.

It’s still broad daylight, the air sweet and warm, the faint hum of mopeds everywhere, the city so alive and I am here, with nothing to do for the evening. I stand there for a second, thinking what to do next, then, without putting too much thought into it, I press ‘call’. What the hell – I’ve lost my dignity now, what else is there to lose? I can’t believe he thinks he can just send me a text like that and get away with it. I mean, ‘something came up’? That is so lame. What ‘thing’ ever comes up right at the last minute that means he can’t at least speak to me in person? Helpfully, as his phone rings out, I run through these possibilities in my head: Rachel’s found out, he’s seeing someone else, he’s decided he just doesn’t want to see me any more. I decide this line of thinking
is not altogether healthy or helpful. He doesn’t pick up anyway, so I give up.

I walk towards Blackfriars Bridge, the most beautiful bridge in London if you ask me, the lights of the Southbank twinkling, my case trundling behind me on the tarmac like a child being dragged home from a party that their mother got the wrong date for.

It’s Monday – five days after I was stood up at the Malmaison by Toby – and the night of the Annual Product Sales Awards. I’m up for Salesperson of the Year in the health and beauty market section – get me! Janine put me in for it, which is high praise indeed from the Iron Lady in Joseph Trousers. Up until a few weeks ago, I would have been pathetically excited about it, too, but recent events have put a dampener on things. For the first time in my life, I am failing to get a high from work. A potential award for selling breath freshener doesn’t quite seem to be cutting it any more.

Thoughts of Toby are taking up all my energy. It’s ridiculous, an affliction, a kind of OCD. He’s the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about when I go to sleep. When I’m drying my hair, I’m thinking about him, when I’m talking to someone on the phone about dental floss, I’m thinking about him. When I’m designing a pie-chart on PowerPoint, I’m attributing sections to him: sixty per cent chance he’s still in love with Rachel, twenty per cent chance he does actually love me, two per cent chance he’ll ever leave his wife. When I’m not thinking about him, I’m thinking about them together and it’s driving me
insane.

The day after he stood me up, I questioned him about it in the office.

‘So what was this “something” that came up?’ I asked him as he tried to walk past me in the corridor. He looked tired and stressed – maybe he was ill. Damn it, I even cared about him when he was being a prize cock.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, fine,’ he said, touching my arm. I felt a murmur of desire. ‘Listen, I’m really sorry about last night.’

‘You should be. Forty minutes I waited there, Toby. Whatever it was – an unmissable episode of
Glee,
sudden attack of food poisoning, attack of cowardice, perhaps?’ He didn’t even flinch. ‘You could have at least called me.’

‘Rachel wasn’t well and to leave her would have just looked dodgy. I was annoyed, to tell you the truth. I was desperate to see you.’ He got hold of my hand. ‘It’s been over a week since I snogged you, Steeley, do you know that?’

God,
I wish he wouldn’t say things like that.

‘What was wrong with her?’

‘Migraine.’

‘Right.’ Likely story.

‘She gets really bad ones: flashing lights, sickness, the works. She was off work all day.’

I frown. This didn’t really add up.

‘Right. So if she was off work all day, why didn’t you tell me earlier that you probably wouldn’t make it?’

Toby gave a short, hurt laugh.

‘Oh my God, you don’t believe me, do you?’

‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘Yes, I believe you. I think. Actually, I don’t know what to believe any more. I just don’t know why you had me make the journey all the way there, sit in the foyer waiting for you like a total lemon, then text me forty minutes after you were supposed to arrive?’

He sighed and rubbed his forehead.

‘Oh God, I know, I know …’ He sighed. ‘She was being very irritating, to be honest. One minute she was saying go, I’ll be fine. The next she was flailing about on the bed, whingeing for me to stay with her. It just got later and later.’

I still wasn’t convinced.

That was on Thursday. Now it’s Monday and Toby staggers out of the Men’s Room of Grosvenor House on Park Lane just as I’m walking to the bar. There’s a red wine stain down the front of his shirt and his flies are undone.

‘All
right,
Steeley. Nice frock.’

He leans in to give me a kiss on the cheek but misses so I get a Lucky Strike flavoured slobber in the ear instead.

‘Where’ve you been?’ I say. I have to shout over the noise of a thousand overexcited sales people already half-cut on cheap plonk. ‘I’ve been looking for you all over. I wanted to practice my speech on you.’

‘Me and a few of the lads went to the pub first; couldn’t face five hours of this shit.’

‘Oh,’ I say, feeling ever so slightly hurt and idiotic standing here in my full-length gown like the Annual Product Sales Awards are actually the Oscars.

Toby loses his footing slightly and staggers backwards. God, he’s pissed.

‘Anyway,’ he slurs. ‘Giz a little sample of this speech, then.’

‘I’ve kept it quite short,’ I say, perking up. ‘Just outlining how Schumacher and I negotiated, my strategy, that sort of thing.’

Toby grins, his eyelids heavy, then breaks into a cruel little laugh. ‘Wow, get you, Little Miss Confident. You really reckon you’ve nailed this, don’t you?’

I feel myself go red. Ever since I was nominated for this award, Toby has behaved like a total arse. At first, I brushed off his one-word ‘lickarse’ emails and his ‘you’re so spawny’
comments as harmless banter. Back then, I was grateful of any sort of banter. But now it’s just rude, frankly. I’m beginning to think Janine’s right.

‘I think you might be just jealous,’ I say. ‘And really drunk. Oh.’ I reach over and patronizingly arrange his quiff, which has gone fluffy and looks rather ridiculous now. ‘And I think you’ll find your flies are undone.’

I stride off, eyes squeezed shut. That was good, Steele! I think. Don’t ruin it by turning back. Deep down though, as I climb the stairs to the top tier of the Grosvenor House Ballroom, where a queue of other girls poured into shiny, satin dresses wait at the bar, I feel a horrid spread of disappointment in the pit of my stomach, a pang of humiliation that I can’t shake. Since last week’s book club that never happened, since Brighton really, I see it now, I can’t deny that Toby’s been distinctly off with me. Not much in the way of flirtatious emails, no brushing hands in the corridors or clinches in the kitchen, not even any pen throwing in the last few days. In fact, by the way he set up almost all his meetings out of the office last week, you’d think he was avoiding me.

You might also think I’d be pleased, that it would make things easier, given that I’m going to dump him soon. Soon. Very, very soon.

But it’s far easier said than done and a tiny part of me (scrap that, every last cell of me) has been holding out for a miracle, clinging to the hope that at some point, perhaps tonight when he saw me in my off-the-shoulder Coast dress that I now feel overdressed in, or up on stage, collecting my award, he’d really fall a little bit in love with me. He’d choose me over her. But now he’s so drunk and clearly so unimpressed by it all that it would be a miracle if he even made it until my category without collapsing in a pool of his own vomit. Was it too much to expect him to be a bit proud of me?

Still, now’s not the time to think about all this, I tell myself,
standing here in the queue. This is work, your big night. The night you’ve been focusing on all year. So where are your powers of compartmentalization now, Caroline Steele? What happened to the girl who was able to separate her life like laundry, just a few months ago? Now it feels like everything’s in a gigantic chaotic heap that, rather than sort out, I just keep adding to.

I take another glass of champagne from the tray of free ones laid out on the bar. This has got to be the last one, I tell myself, if I’m not going to be tripping up on stage, or doing a Judy Finnigan, my bra hanging out for all to see. The ceremony starts in fifteen minutes.

‘I hope that’s going to be your last, missy.’

I turn around to find Health and Safety Heather, resplendent in an enormous crushed-velvet dress and bolero ensemble, evidently reading my mind.

‘We’re counting on you. You’re our only hope.’

‘Oh thanks, but honestly, please,’ I say, modestly, but inside I’m quietly confident. My pitch to the judges went well and Janine made noises that I was definitely in for the running – maybe I deserve some good luck?

‘I’m serious!’ Heather shouts, grabbing my arm. ‘That award has got your name on.’

I’ve come to rather like Heather of late; we’ve bonded over our monthly fire-marshal meetings and First Aid courses – oddly, they’ve been light relief from the tension of the Toby and I situation – and if you can get past the fact that Heather is the most interfering woman you’re ever likely to meet, the sort who thinks nothing of asking you about your bowel movements in front of your colleagues, you see that she has a heart of gold.

‘Come on, you.’ Heather takes me by the arm, away from the bar, and we weave our way through the forty or so numbered tables all laid with crisp white tablecloths and
floral centrepieces, candles casting everyone in a flattering light.

This is my first Annual Product Sales Ceremony – in past years, for one reason or another I’ve not been able to attend, and it hadn’t much bothered me because I’d never been up for an award before. Already I can see that the tribes are out in force. The lads from Leyton-Blanche – basically a load of piss-heads who sell lager to the supermarkets. The Reimans crew, distinctive if only because they’re all female – they sell disposable nappies and other baby products to the supermarkets. And then the banking lot – the ‘wanker bankers’, as Shona calls them, the WBs being the epitome of everything she hates – getting stuck into the champers before anyone’s even won anything.

We wave at all the SCD clan as we approach our table – a number seventy-seven sticking out of the middle. ‘All the sevens, seventy-seven, this is our lucky night,’ says Heather with what I’m beginning to think is a worrying level of confidence. Still, my name place is next to Janine.

‘They always put you next to the boss if they think you’re going to win,’ Shona said with typical dryness when we arrived. ‘It’s so that when they call your name out, they can gush that you’ve always been their prodigy and make you feel guilty that you should spend your prize money on booze for the table rather than keep it for yourself.’

I rolled my eyes. Shona was such a cynic. If you ever wanted honesty, Shona was your woman.

Everyone’s sitting at the SCD table now, and the seating plan is like this: me, Janine to my right and after her Shona. Lexi is on the left of me, sporting her new, tight purple dress from Jane Norman and the highest, most brilliant shoes you’ve ever seen. She looks gorgeous.

I watch her as she chats to Charles, opposite. I see how poised she is, how a little frown line develops in her forehead as she listens intently. Lexi has grown-up so much, I think.
My little sister. My very own confidante. She’s been more excited than me about this event. I feel like I owe her. Oh God, please let me live up to her expectations, at least tonight.

So, there’s Lexi, followed by Heather and Marta and after that, in order of drunkenness, the boys: Toupee Dom, hairpiece combed for the event, Charles from marketing, and then Toby, who is wide-eyed and seems to be finding Marta enthralling for the first time in his life, which tells me he may have had something more than a wee when he went to the toilets just before.

The lights dim. ‘You all right?’ whispers Janine in my ear. ‘Remember, if you go up – well,
when
you go up – take a second to look straight ahead so that they can take your photo for the internal magazine, okay?’

I feel a bubble of anticipation rise in my throat.

Mine is the third category. Before me is ‘fast-selling consumer product of the year’ then the ‘financial products’ section won by a bloke from the wanker bankers table with hair like Simon Le Bon.

Jimmy Carr is compering, but most of his jokes fall embarrassingly flat on the ears of a straight sales audience, particularly the nappy girls on the table next to us. Something tells me that deadpan, wrong humour, isn’t really their thing. I look over at Toby. His face seems to be getting redder and sweatier by the second, his voice louder and more obnoxious. He looks like he’s going to combust. He heckles Carr until Carr makes a joke at his expense – something about him being a fucking Eton Mess. Everyone laughs, except me.

Please don’t get chucked out, Toby, I plead silently, or heckle me or spoil my moment because, if you do, I don’t think I’ll be able to forgive you.

And then suddenly it’s my category.

‘Now for Health and Beauty …’ announces Carr. ‘And the shortlist is …’

There’s the familiar drum roll music as he gestures to the huge screen behind him.

MACKENZIE BOOTH FROM GLAXOSMITHKLINE!

Mackenzie’s grin bounces onto the screen and his table goes wild.

GSK are renowned for sweeping awards.

‘We’ll nail him, no fucking problem,’ Janine whispers in my ear. My lips break into an involuntary smile.

CAROLINE STEELE FROM SKIDMORE-COLT-DAVIS!

The table vibrates as everyone whoops and cheers and bangs the table with their fists and I grin like an idiot. Maybe that award would hit the mark after all.

‘Go Caro! Go Caro!’ shouts Lexi, shaking her hands from side to side like she’s shaking a cocktail. I smile, but I’m not taking it in, I’m too busy looking over at Toby – what the hell is he doing? Taking a Lucky Strike out of his cigarette packet and putting it behind his ear? Oh God. If he leaves the room to smoke now I will kill him.

‘And last but certainly not least …’ Carr holds the room in suspense for a second before calling out the name of the final contender.

RACHEL DELANEY FROM HUNTERHEWITT!

What? My heart thuds horribly. I stare open-mouthed at the screen, at the honey-haired girl with the beautiful, wide smile that I know I recognize, but I can’t quite compute.

Rachel? Rachel was up for the same award as me and Toby didn’t
tell
me? He’d known – he
must
have known! Their marriage wasn’t so bad that she wouldn’t have told him – I mean, he looked after her when she had the migraine, for God’s sake!

I feel my face burn. I look over at Toby but his seat is empty and I can just see him flitting between the tables as he makes his way to the exit.

Janine nudges me in the side.

‘Remember to smile,’ she says, but I can’t reply. If I speak I might cry.

‘And the winner is …’

I can literally feel my heart threatening to burst out of the Coast dress now.

‘Make sure your dress isn’t stuck in your knickers,’ Lexi whispers loudly and everyone laughs but I can’t say anything, my lips won’t move.